While Dragon Age 2 did suck in every area except the upgraded combat (and that was more of a lateral shift), there is absolutely no reason to do anything except say how much it sucks. Death threats and anything like it do nothing except make the rest of us look bad.

Pocket Ninja:I've never played this game and doubt I ever will. But were the changes made really so utterly profound that they could destroy some troglodyte's enjoyment of it?

If it had been a standalone game with nothing preceeding it, it would've been fine. What they did was take a fantastic first installment, remove everything about it that made it fantastic, and slap a 2 on it.

It was a rush job by BioWare because they weren't counting on how successful the first one would be.

"Jennifer Hepler left BioWare this week to begin work on a book about narrative design and do some freelance work. Her most recent job title was senior writer on Dragon Age: Inquisition. But it was Dragon Age 2 that led to the death threats, the threats against her family and children and the harassment.

When asked if the harassment led to her depature, Hepler told Polygon "No, leaving Bioware was for family reasons. I am going to be working on a text book on narrative design among other game-related freelance projects."

After Dragon Age 2 came out in 2011, Hepler told Polygon, many of the people involved in the game's development received angry emails, abusive forum posts and petitions calling for them to be fired. About that time, someone dug up an old interview Hepler participated in six years earlier. In the interview Hepler mentioned that her least favorite part of working in the game industry was playing through games and combat. Some of the interview was put in the official forums as evidence that Hepler was to blame for changes in the game's combat. The forum post was removed and Hepler went on maternity leave. But then the following February someone created a forum post resurfacing the interview and called Hepler the "cancer" that was destroying BioWare.

"I had opened a Twitter account a few weeks before that, and this poster or others quickly found me there and began sending threatening messages," she said. "I shut my account down without reading them, so I'm not certain what they said, but other people have told me they were quite vile."

The forum post and Hepler's Weeners on Twitter, ignited a firestorm of hatred and harassment that included emailed death threats and threats against her children.

"I did my best to avoid actually reading any of it, so I'm not quite certain how bad it got," Hepler said. "I was shown a sample of the forum posts by EA security and it included graphic threats to kill my children on their way out of school to show them that they should have been aborted at birth rather than have to have me as a mother."

Hepler also received harassing phone calls and threats on the BioWare Social Network.

The impact though, she said, was mostly positive.

"The outpouring of support I received - large amounts from female and gay fans - was incredibly heartening," she said. "I got hundreds of messages from people who had been deeply moved by characters and scenes that I wrote and who had made positive changes in their real lives because of it. Without the negativity, I'm not sure that I would ever have heard from all of these people confirming that there is a need for characters that tackle touchy social issues, for characters who are untraditional or even unlikeable. It has definitely strengthened my desire to continue to make games that strive for inclusivity and that use fiction and fantasy to explore difficult, uncomfortable real-world issues."

scottydoesntknow: What they did was take a fantastic first installment, remove everything about it that made it fantastic, and slap a 2 on it.

Sort of like when Star Trek took Captain James Tiberius Kirk and replaced him with some bald Frenchman who spoke with an English accent. I bet Bioware could have gotten away with it, if they called it "Dragon Age: The Next Generation", instead of "Dragon Age 2".

I have never felt the urge to kill someone's children.I have never felt the urge to threaten to kill someone's children.I have never even felt the urge to joke about threatening to kill someone's children.

What the fark is wrong with you people? Red Sox fans are like Jane Austen characters compared to you.

scottydoesntknow:Pocket Ninja: I've never played this game and doubt I ever will. But were the changes made really so utterly profound that they could destroy some troglodyte's enjoyment of it?

If it had been a standalone game with nothing preceeding it, it would've been fine. What they did was take a fantastic first installment, remove everything about it that made it fantastic, and slap a 2 on it.

It was a rush job by BioWare because they weren't counting on how successful the first one would be.

I know you aren't defending the people who made threats, but to those people, how in the fark can that be justification for something that horrible? Just don't buy anymore of their games.

Pretty much why the only game I play now is Flight Simulator. I suspect the average age of the community is mid-40's, there are no death threats when a plane doesn't fly exactly like it's supposed to, and the only thing idiots do online is crash while screaming into their microphones.

Meanwhile, I still remember the days of Battlefield 2, where you were either a total noob or a cheat. There were no inbetweens.

I guess Hollywood actors/screenwriter also get this kind of abuse as well? But seriously, WTF is wrong with people. My daughter wants to go into video game creation when she grows up, this kind of shiat worries me.

I'm not a fan of some of Totilo's articles, but the write up he did for Polygon that Metro took most of their article from is much longer and far better. It includes how the old head of Xbox Live enforcement would get 'swatted' and other tales from people who have received similar threats along with reasons why some people take it to far.

picturescrazy:scottydoesntknow: Pocket Ninja: I've never played this game and doubt I ever will. But were the changes made really so utterly profound that they could destroy some troglodyte's enjoyment of it?

If it had been a standalone game with nothing preceeding it, it would've been fine. What they did was take a fantastic first installment, remove everything about it that made it fantastic, and slap a 2 on it.

It was a rush job by BioWare because they weren't counting on how successful the first one would be.

I know you aren't defending the people who made threats, but to those people, how in the fark can that be justification for something that horrible? Just don't buy anymore of their games.

It isn't. There's absolutely no excuse. It's pretty much like the Stephen King book Misery, except instead of a crazy lady who cuts you off from the outside world so they can't see what she's doing, it's anonymity in the outside world that makes you a dick.

Game forums are den of pure, unapologetic stupid. If you think Fark politics threads get bad, allow me to point you to Youtube comments and, from there, allow me to point you to video game forums. When you get a group of anonymous people together in a competitive environment like that the whole thing just goes to complete shiat. It's like every single frustration the people had is brought out in this anonymous setting and the racism and homophobia and general insults just flow like a river. It's insane. Video game players are just awful when they get together.

The writing (and combat system) of DA2 were the only good parts. I've seen references to how she "ruined" the game. But wasn't the game ruined by its being rushed, which led to repeated environments 9000 times over?

Am I missing something as to what "writing" entails? The ending was fantastic and I did not see it coming at all, especially after playing DA:Awakening.

/obviously, these people are the worst, no matter what Hepler did or didn't do.

Shame about all that though I can't imagine taking the threats of angry nerds serious enough to warrant quitting her job. I would imagine it was less the threats and more her desire to not out up with the negativity of the Internet culture.

I actually liked the direction DA2 was taking combat and for a first step it wasn't great but was enjoyable. I also liked the plot of DA2 a lot more than DA1s magical black dragon adventure. I honestly think most of the backlash was just how rushed the games world was considering it reused every map five times over.

Judging by the title of DA3 it looks like the events of DA2 will play strongly in it and I look forward to playing but not paying for day 1 DLC.

Pocket Ninja:I've never played this game and doubt I ever will. But were the changes made really so utterly profound that they could destroy some troglodyte's enjoyment of it?

You should have seen the racist vileness that was spewed when basement-dwellers heard the main character in GTA: San Andreas was going to be black.

skozlaw:HotIgneous Intruder: //And why is nobody being arrested for these threats? Hmmm?

Because the resources required to hunt down some pimple-faced fatass hiding in his parent's basement aren't justified?

Things like this make me seriously reconsider my opposition to game companies that want people to use their real names, though.

Death threat over the internet means most likely death threat across state lines.

18 USC § 875 - Interstate communications(c) Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

And given the caliber of person we are most likely talking to here, tracking them probably isn't all that hard.

Blizzard tried doing that to cut back on Forum/Game douchebaggery with their Real ID plan.

The problem with that being that it would make internet stalking far too easy for a game community with a sizable chunk of mentally and emotionally unstable players. Female toons already get harassed and propositioned on WoW relentlessly; knowing that the player is really a woman and having a link to her real identity would have lead to some horrifying situations.

Don't believe me? Go spend an hour in Goldshire on Moon Guard or another RP server listening to the general chat and yells.

The simplest solution would be to actually enforce the conduct rules and start wielding the banhammers, but they don't want to loose half their subscriber base through banning.

I think the fact that she castrated Dragon Age II was her fault why we can't have nice things.

It's highly unlikely that one person, especially one of the writers, was involved in the game design decisions or in any way made the final approval one game mechanics. Issues with the quality or lack of it would likely be the responsibility of the creative director(s) or possibly resulted from publisher influence/interference.

Fans harassing someone doesn't help actually communicate problems people had with the game, and makes such complaints easier to write off.

zarberg:BioWare could run over my dog and I'd forgive them because they did what I thought was impossible with KotOR:

Restored my faith in Star Wars after eps I-III

Same here. The problem though is that the BioWare of KoTOR and Mass Effect 1&2 is no longer alive. BW now is just EA milking the corpse and rushing out games they have no intention of putting any sort of quality or development into. See: Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, The Old Republic. The cash and development that went into TOR was mostly spent by BW before the full buyout by EA; once that happened, ship it ASAP and don't worry about support or world-building.

scottydoesntknow:While Dragon Age 2 did suck in every area except the upgraded combat (and that was more of a lateral shift), there is absolutely no reason to do anything except say how much it sucks. Death threats and anything like it do nothing except make the rest of us look bad.

/F*cking kids

And apparently make the lead writer quit. Can't say I'm sorry, the storytelling in Dragon Age II seriously sucked ass.

scottydoesntknow:Meh, to me they (mostly) redeemed themselves with the Citadel DLC. It was the ending everyone wanted, but not the ending they could deliver with the original product.

It wasn't the one I wanted. I loved the Citadel DLC, but the actual ending ignored the entire premise of the first game in the franchise. I did get upset about the ending, even more so that I really should have. Perhaps it was because I so enjoyed the first two games, and hell, I really really liked ME3 up until the ending (and I also really like the DLC, even the less popular ones like Omega, since I had also read through the comic books related to that DLC, before the DLC was ever even announced)

Never once, however, did I ever feel the need to threaten anyone at all about the ending, it just never occurred to me that it would A) get any sort of positive change; B) seem like something a decent human being should ever do, especially for some so trivial as a piece of entertainment (that kept me very entertained) or C) open a meaningful dialog with the writers so that they would understand why I was upset about the ending and what kind of details people in the community such as myself like in these stories, and what we didn't

Threatening people, their families, their friends, it just makes no sense at all. It'll more likely cause the end of a beloved franchise than have a positive effect of future iterations

/Oh, and if you are wondering what the pet peeve detail was that had me upset, it was that there was an AI that controlled all the Reapers living on the Citadel itself, yet was incapable of noticing that some Protheans had gotten onto the Citadel after their extinction event and messed with the Keepers so that the Citadel Relay would not open up and let the Reapers through. This AI was also seemingly incapable of signaling the Reapers that it was once again time to harvest life, and so Sovereign was left as a Vanguard, that could interface with the Citadel to open the Relay, whereas the AI, once again, was seemingly incapable of doing so//I wanted about 2 lines of dialog between the AI and Shep giving an explanation, like "I can watch, but am no longer capable of interfacing with the Reapers, and much of the station"///I'm not bitter. It was a good game, worth the money and time I put into it